ATI today officially announced the Radeon X800, their new top of the line visual processor featuring 16 parallel pixel pipes and 6 vertex pipes. Two different versions will be released, the X800 XT Platinum Edition and the X800 PRO with the XT being the faster version. The Pro is available immediatly for $399, while the XT will ship later this month and will set you back $499. The press release also offers quotes from people at Digital Illusions, Irrational Games and Ritual Entertainment. Previews/reviews can be found at HardOCP, Tech-Report, AnandTech, Beyond 3D, HotHardware, Hardware Analysis, Gamers Depot, GameSpot and NeoSeeker.

The Radeon X800 series cards perform best in some of our most intensive benchmarks based on newer games or requiring lots of pixel shading power, including Far Cry, Painkiller, UT2004, and 3DMark03's Mother Nature scene - especially high resolutions with edge and texture antialiasing enabled. The X800s also have superior edge antialiasing. Their 6X multisampling mode reduces edge jaggies better than NVIDIA's 8xS mode, and the presence of temporal antialiasing only underscores ATI's leadership here. With a single-slot cooler, one power connector, and fairly reasonable power requirements, the Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition offers all its capability with less inconvenience than NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 Ultra. What's more, ATI's X800 series will be in stores first, with a more mature driver than NVIDIA currently has for the GeForce 6800 line.